The Weird Mental Frameworks Of The Super Rich - Codie Sanchez

Chris Williamson 0:00 What's a contrarian to you?

Codie Sanchez 0:03 I think I wanna steal a quote for this one, which is Christopher Hitchens, and his quote was, "A contrarian is not one who always disagrees, but one who questions everything." And so my idea is in the world that we have right now, it's probably pretty smart to question assumptions continuously, and the humans who do that are the ones that win over time. Uh, I don't think the goal is to just be ornery or to counter culture, but to actually use your brain to come up with a formulation of thoughts that is unique to you.

Chris Williamson 0:33 Is that not antithetical to moving quickly? If you've got to question everything, super effortful, that means you can't make decisions quite as fast.

Codie Sanchez 0:41 It's interesting you say that. We were talking about a mutual friend of ours, Bill Perkins, and Bill told me, uh, his two superpowers that have led to every single dollar he's made, and he goes, uh, "It is that I'm willing to take wi- risk, and I move faster than everybody else. So by the time they've even pondered an idea, I've already done it, made five mistakes, and learned five lessons." And every time I meet with Bill, I realize that's exactly right, and that's why he's one of the most successful people that I've ever met. And yet, I think if you don't question things, and you don't have a brilliant mind like he seems to, you're just gonna be on the wrong road path, and if you don't actually know the goal that you wanna hit, if you don't actually know where you're going, most people move forward towards things that they actually don't want in life, and I've done it many, many times. And so in my mind, if you don't question up front, then you might not actually like the answer you get to when you find it.

Chris Williamson 1:33 Mm. Yeah, the intentionality point, I think, is so important, and it comes up in dating. It comes up in business. It comes up in, where are you gonna live? What sort of lifestyle are you gonna have? How much success do you want? Ooh, that's a fucking big one. So this really cool quote that I saw from, uh, Nassim Taleb, "The world is split between those who don't know how to start making money and those who don't know when to stop."

Codie Sanchez 1:55 Ooh, yeah, that hits home, huh?

Chris Williamson 1:57 (laughs) Are you feeling that one?

Codie Sanchez 1:58 I'm feeling that one.

Chris Williamson 1:59 (laughs) Just-

Codie Sanchez 1:59 That was kinda deep.

Chris Williamson 2:00 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 2:01 Yeah, well, I- I think he's- he's right, but thank God there are some humans that don't stop. Like, sometimes I think about, you couldn't pay me enough money to switch places with Elon Musk. There's not enough money out there. I am so glad that he exists as a human in the world because we get to benefit from the creations that he makes, but I don't think he looks very happy, and sometimes the person that I actually, you know, lust after from an exchange of life perspective is the person who owns a couple of cash flowing businesses, happily married, couple of kids, in good shape, has tons of free time, and is really close to their community, and, uh, it's not the person who has built multiple billions of dollars 'cause at the end of the day, what are you gonna do with it? And so, uh, unfortunately, I'm wired as one of those freakish humans that loves the game, does not know when to stop, and finds everything else pales by nature, but I do think he's- he's right, don't you?

Chris Williamson 2:51 Yeah, I- the idea of when is enough enough is such an interesting question, and you've heard the parable of the Mexican fisherman. You know this.

Codie Sanchez 3:00 Oh yeah, such a good one.

Chris Williamson 3:01 Yeah, so for the people that don't know this sort of very interesting parable that shows there is a quicker shortcut to the life that you want by reducing down complexity, not overcooking how much you achieve, and then just going for simplicity in the first place, right? Rather than having to build an elaborate life to then eventually be able to afford a simple one, like the elaborate life is kind of unnecessary once... especially once you cross a certain threshold of- of income and wealth. Another cool quote about contrarianism, "A contrarian isn't one who always objects. That's a conformist of a different sort. A contrarian reasons independently from the ground up and resists pressure to conform."

Codie Sanchez 3:38 Hitchens, right?

Chris Williamson 3:39 Naval.

Codie Sanchez 3:39 Oh, that was Naval, good one.

Chris Williamson 3:41 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Codie Sanchez 3:42 Okay.

Chris Williamson 3:42 Yeah, that's Naval. I love the fact that when we're thinking about pushing back against conformity, like the average American is obese, divorced, with less than 1K in the bank, right?

Codie Sanchez 3:56 Oof, yep.

Chris Williamson 3:57 Taking the normal route might feel safe in the moment, but it's actually a really undesirable thing to do 'cause you can see the- the outcomes that you're going to get.

Codie Sanchez 4:06 You're exactly right.

Chris Williamson 4:06 They're there in front of you.

Codie Sanchez 4:07 Yeah, I mean, I was reading statistics the other week about the- w- if there's one out of ten, uh, Americans that get to age 65, by that point, only one of them will be independently wealthy, uh, and by the time they die, uh, only one of them will be independently wealthy. We will have m- uh, I think it's two people will have actually died by the time they go to retire, so they won't even have made it there, um, the other two will actually be on government welfare or, uh, someone else's dime, like in their family, et cetera. And so what we have done systematically is not working if only 10% of the population actually dies with excess cash-

Chris Williamson 4:44 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 4:44 ...um, because funerals are expensive. And so I think, you know, it was interesting, what I really respected about Naval, in many different ways, but I remember when he was first building AngelList, um, I interacted with him a few times on Twitter. We're by no means friends, but we interacted a few times after it had done- you know, been valued at a few billion dollars, and, uh, and I was bothering him and his team. I'm like, "I buy businesses all day long. There's nothing like AngelList for people who actually buy companies and wanna own total majority- majority shares, as opposed to just small segments of companies like VC. You guys have all the capability, just build it." And I remember I was kinda getting through to his, I don't know if it was his CEO or his COO at the time, and then Naval just came in and was like, "It is not what we do. We do, and we are the best in the world at serving venture capital style businesses and small minority shares."

Chris Williamson 5:38 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 5:38 And he's like, "If we wanted to be everything to everybody, we would've never hit our first billion."... and I was like, "All right, sir." You know, and I totally, I get his point. Um, but to stand up when you have that much capacity, and capital, and see so many shiny objects everywhere, and continue to say no to the ones that don't serve you is a real superpower too.

Chris Williamson 5:56 Well, don't forget that that is another type of non-conformity.

Codie Sanchez 6:00 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:00 Right? That's another type of contrarianism to not say yes to everything. And i- it's, uh, I've been thinking about this so much. The tools that you need when you begin a pursuit, or when you begin a journey, are sometimes even the opposite ones that you need as you begin to develop. So, uh, let's say that it's growing a business. In the beginning, you need to be very detail-oriented, you need to be across everything, you need to be completely obsessive about all of the stuff that's going on. And then after a while, you actually need to be able to learn to delegate. And the skill which made you effective in the beginning, and you have proof is good, and you get dopamine from doing, and you're habituated to continuing to do it, is exactly the one that's going to hold you back if you can't let go later on. Uh, if we were to talk about, um, status and, and the things that come to you, explore in the beginning, try lots of different things, make as many connections as you can, finally build up some sort of a reputation. And then as the reputation rises and rises and rises, you actually need to no longer say yes to everything.

Codie Sanchez 6:55 Yep.

Chris Williamson 6:55 You need to say no to almost everything, right? So, a- again, the skill that you develop in the beginning is often not the thing that is useful at the end, and you've, you're so inculcated into this rhythm of doing it, and you're like, "I'm trying to cast off this habit of me doing that thing." It's very difficult.

Codie Sanchez 7:14 Oh, yeah. Well, especially if you think about, uh, dollar amounts. So when you first make your first $100,000, there's a skill set that I think is quite normalized if you want to make $100,000, which is you need to learn as much as possible in order to increase your earnings. Predominantly working for somebody else is the fastest way to get to your first 100K, and that same skill set to get from 100K to a million is relatively similar. So you can get to a million dollars pretty much using that same skill set. But in order for you to become an employee that has a high level of learning and a high level of earning that is worth $10 million, actually quite hard. The difference between a million and 10 million is difficult. And to go from 10 to 100 million is categorically different. And to go from 100 million to a billion, if you just look at the math between the two, uh, there is no possible way for you to do it as an employee. Like, it hasn't been done. There is not a billionaire that was an employee of somebody else's company. And so, the, the math just doesn't lie. And so because of that, I think it's really interesting to determine what is, what is it that you actually want? Who has achieved it before? What are the characteristics that are similar, uh, in those subset of humans that have done it? And then, can you actually find a roadmap or ripple or rhyme between all of those humans to get to the next level? And it's a, it's a superpower to be able to see through the matrix like that, to figure out the difference between 1 and 10 and 100 and a billion.

Chris Williamson 8:33 Yeah. What's

Chris Williamson 8:35 your, uh, h- how do you ensure that you're remaining intentional? Like, what's your framework for non-conformity?

Codie Sanchez 8:42 Couple different things. Th- the first thing that, this is a friend of mine, Alex and I, um, he's, I sit on the board of his hedge fund. He's one of the smartest men I know, and he runs a, a multi-billion dollar hedge fund portfolio, and I remember, you know, we focus a lot on this idea of, how do we think differently than other people? Because if you invest just like everybody else as an investor, on average, you lose money over time to inflation. That is just the truth. Most humans without a financial advisor in the market actually lose money over time in the stock market. And what people say instead is, "No, the stock market returns 10% a year on average." Yes, the stock market as an entity that is not you individually. You individually lose money over time in the stock market, which is wild. And so when I started thinking about it as a numbers game with him, I realized the funnel to non-conformity is essentially this. It is, you have to continue to question the thoughts that you have inherently, you have to, uh, be off from everybody else slightly, and you have to figure out how to be right (laughs) . And those two things are really, really hard.

Chris Williamson 9:44 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 9:44 To be consistently, have a different perspective, and be right on those perspectives. And that's the only way you can actually make money long term in the stock market, or really in just about anything where you want to be worth over $100 million. You can definitely be in consensus and make a million, two million, 10 million, maybe even 25 or 50.

Chris Williamson 10:05 It's interesting to think about the, the fact that you can't signal off what everybody else is doing if you want to get outsized results, right? Ultimately, if you do end up signaling off everyone else, you're going to end up with results that are at least comparable with what they're doing.

Codie Sanchez 10:19 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 10:19 And I suppose that this kind of, at least in part, relates to you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with.

Codie Sanchez 10:24 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 10:25 I actually think that there's a better rule, which is, you are the average of the five podcasts you listen to the most.

Codie Sanchez 10:30 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 10:30 Um... (laughs)

Codie Sanchez 10:31 Can't imagine why. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 10:32 ... I think, uh, I have my ego knows no bounds. Um, yeah, but the outsized influence of the people that you're around, ultimately, you're still going to inhabit, uh, uh, encounter the same problem unless you and everybody else that you're friends with is on, on this insane growth trajectory. So, all right, so what's gonna happen? You g- you somehow, when you are at this stage of your personal growth, family growth, wealth growth journey, going to find four other people, all of whom are going to be, have the exact same trajectory that you do. And I think this is why there's definitely a degree of loneliness-

Codie Sanchez 11:08 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:08 ... that I have seen to a lot of people who achieve rapid success, because it's very hard to find some people to come with you on that journey, because your growth is so, uh, rapidly accelerating. Like, who, what's the chance that you find somebody else that's able to come along with you, or maybe the person that you're with is moving quicker than you are? So I think what seems to happen is people kind of move through bubbles of friends.

Codie Sanchez 11:34 Yep.

Chris Williamson 11:34 So as they're going on their journey, "Okay, I'm in this new bracket," and then, uh, that kind of falls behind, and then, "I'm in a new bracket," and then that kind of falls behind. At least I see that through Alex as a, a good example.

Codie Sanchez 11:44 Yeah. No, I think that's exactly right. I mean, the sad thing is, and you, I, and Alex have talked about this before, I think, and he might have even been the one that said it, which was, "Other people want you to be just slightly less successful than they are on average." And, um, and I think that is a gross generalization in that...... not everybody is like that, but a preponderance of humans, because we're scarcity mindset, it's how we were wired-

Chris Williamson 12:08 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 12:08 ... um, you know, from learning how to survive on the plains, uh, we know that if there's a bunch of other people around us, historically, there weren't enough resources to go around.

Chris Williamson 12:20 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 12:20 You know, we had to actually be protective of the things that we made. Now, in today's world, in which innovation continues to allow us to achieve more and more, and there's actually ... it doesn't have to be a zero sum game, I don't think we have caught up here with what we know out here in the innovation sphere.

Chris Williamson 12:34 That's interesting. So, if you say, uh, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room.

Codie Sanchez 12:41 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 12:42 But what it's also doing, that sort of a rule, is protecting you from being the person that's going to receive the ire and the jealousy and the backbiting from the other people. So, endeavoring to be the poorest person in the room or the most stupid person in the room or the least accomplished person in the room ensures that you're going to receive less and less and less envy or- or- or-

Codie Sanchez 13:03 That's actually really true. I mean, we were thinking about it the other day, and I was trying to imagine a person who is really, really successful monetarily, if we want to say, who, um, actively trolls people and, uh, and is negative to others. And I can think of a few, right? You can think of, like, Elon Musk does some dr- trolling on the internet-

Chris Williamson 13:22 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 13:22 ... the Paul brothers do.

Chris Williamson 13:23 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 13:23 But why do they do that? They do that because it's actually a direct revenue line to a thing that they care about, right?

Chris Williamson 13:28 Attention.

Codie Sanchez 13:28 Elon Musk's ... Right.

Chris Williamson 13:29 Yeah. Audible.

Codie Sanchez 13:29 Exactly. We are, we want to have this attention arbitrage trade, so because of that, we are willing to troll. But for the average successful person, I have never met a successful human that doesn't have a monetary incentive to troll the trolls. They just don't exist.

Chris Williamson 13:43 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 13:43 Like, if you want to figure out if somebody is going to be successful or not, I think you should go and look in their Twitter replies and comments, and if they have a bunch of negative ones, you go, "Not hiring them and also not investing in them." Because that type of human, all they can do is they can take rocks and they can throw them because they don't realize they should build with them. And so it's- it's one of the biggest signals. In our companies, actually, we have a social media screen, so for every single hire that we have across our companies, we see, "Do you have a negative perspective on reality and do you play the victim frequently?" And if you are either of those two things, you're just not part of our ecosystem. We do not believe that humans like you will be successful with an attitude like that.

Chris Williamson 14:21 Wow. Okay. You've got a lesson, "The Controversy and Conformity Conundrum."

Chris Williamson 14:26 There is a spectrum where controversies and conformity sit on two ends of the line. More conformity equals less controversial. And yet, most of the wins in life land on the edge of controversy. Choose your controversy wisely, but choose it.

Codie Sanchez 14:41 Yeah. Well, I think you can play this out most easily on social media, right? It's just very easy to tell, uh, once you have an eye towards frameworks, is this tweet going to do well? Is this tweet not going to do well? Depending on is it something that is slightly off from the norm? And Maya Angelou said, you know, "People aren't gonna remember what you said, but they will remember the way you made them feel," and that was this touchy-feely thing that she said that I never really associated with until I saw Twitter, and I said, "That is exactly right." The second that you can make somebody feel something on one way or the other, they are going to react to it, and often we humans react really aggressively without thinking about it at all. In fact, I've found myself doing it. Now, I- I sort of have trained myself not. But when I see something on the internet, you know, there's like that famous Tom Hardy little meme where he's like, "That's clickbait." Have you ever seen that?

Chris Williamson 15:30 Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Codie Sanchez 15:31 "I know what that is. That's bait," right?

Chris Williamson 15:33 Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 15:33 And now we can tell why. Because if it's slightly off from the norm, it is going to attract our attention because just like if there was Where's Waldo and red and white stripes in a sea of people in green, you're going to note this thing that looks slightly differently. And I was talking to a room yesterday of a bunch of, uh, builders in some of our- our companies, and, um, they were asking me, "How do you, how do you build a personal brand and how do you tweet and know what's, what's gonna work one way or the other?" And, uh, I don't know if I ever told this story, but I feel like your audience might appreciate it or think this is terrible, but, uh, they ... I remember I- I ... We have a newsletter, right? So in that newsletter, I felt like our subject lines were getting really stale. I didn't like 'em. So I told the team, "I bet you $1,000, no matter what you come up with on this newsletter, I'm gonna beat your subject, uh, line." And my team was like, "Yeah, sure. There's like three of us and you're not really that involved in this, so let's go." I'm like, "Great." So, it's about landscaping or tree trimming or something. It's about tree trimming and-

Chris Williamson 16:27 Thrilling.

Codie Sanchez 16:27 Yeah. Just so sexy, right?

Chris Williamson 16:30 (laughs)

Codie Sanchez 16:30 And so it's- it's about making money with tree trimming and their titles were like, "This Guy Made X Doing Y," "This Guy Trimmed Trees and Had XYZ," and there were a couple of 'em that were slightly more clever. And I was like, "Now we're gonna AB test them." And I go, "Mine is, 'I Love Guys With Wood ...' Which do you think b- did better?" Of course, this one, slightly off spectrum, it's still true, so it's not complete cl- clickbait, but it makes you feel something when you see it, is going to do better. And so that's just marketing and sales 101, and that's also attention 101.

Chris Williamson 17:01 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 17:02 Like, if you have a Tinder profile, you're probably better off having something slightly controversial 'cause I bet women would engage with that more often.

Chris Williamson 17:09 Like a KKK hood?

Codie Sanchez 17:11 Probably not that far. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 17:12 All right. Okay. Well-

Codie Sanchez 17:13 Let's not ... I don't know if-

Chris Williamson 17:14 Fair enough.

Codie Sanchez 17:14 ... the Brits really know what was happening there, but ...

Chris Williamson 17:15 Fair enough.

Codie Sanchez 17:16 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 17:16 Uh, "Reading as a Diet. Be careful what you read-"

Codie Sanchez 17:19 Right.

Chris Williamson 17:19 "... it becomes the way you think.

Chris Williamson 17:21 Words are heard, then internalized, then repeated and then habituated. Curate what you let into your brain as you do with your body." This got me onto an idea I had a while ago about the content diet.

Codie Sanchez 17:32 Mm.

Chris Williamson 17:32 So, most people, especially now, especially in Austin, Jesus, are super, super concerned. Is there seed oils in this? What's the amount of glucose? Tell me if this has been responsibly sourced. And like, it better be from an organic farm. Are there any pesticides? Did somebody that had the vaccine live within 10 miles of where this cow was, like, you know, getting milk drawn from it? Um, and yet, when you look at their YouTube s- suggested feed, it's just limbic race to the bottom of the brain stem, uh-

Codie Sanchez 18:00 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:00 ... Ben Shapiro destroys, like, panel of leftists. Like, you know, it's- it's ... there's stuff that, the guilty pleasures that many people like to watch.

Codie Sanchez 18:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:09 And yeah, it got me thinking about if...... the cells in your body are made up from the food that you put in your mouth. Your brain is made up of the things that you watch and listen and read. And given that, your content diet should be spirulina for the soul rather than fast food for your amygdala.

Codie Sanchez 18:29 (laughs) That's a great line, by the way.

Chris Williamson 18:31 (laughs)

Codie Sanchez 18:32 Spirulina for the Soul, bookmark, trademark.

Chris Williamson 18:34 There you go.

Codie Sanchez 18:35 Yeah, I love that. Um, what I've found about reading is I can immediately see the contagion of greatness when I read it, and then I take action. So if you go and you read Charles Bukowski's best pieces, and then you go to write, your writing will be uplifted by this contagious effect of greatness rubbing off. I don't know what it is, I don't know if there is a framework or philosophy as to why, but I've found the same thing with looking at deals. Often, when I go to invest in a company, I look beforehand at what did Warren Buffett say in his last memo about how he analyzed a company? And you can actually, I think, steal from the minds of others by figuring out what you allow into your brain-

Chris Williamson 19:16 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 19:16 ... and then applying that immediately to what you do. So it's not just in the ether all the time, what are you listening to, but right before you go take an action, if you're going to go into the gym, you know, usually maybe you're taking some sort of pre-workout, right? And then when you're in the gym, you're putting in some hardcore rap or whatever you listen to when you work out, you buff dudes. And then when you're done with the gym, you might go sauna or whatever. But the influence that you have right prior, if you have a giant donut or steak immediately prior and you listen to Lana Del Rey is going to be a different experience-

Chris Williamson 19:47 Huh.

Codie Sanchez 19:47 ... than if you do the former. Why would we think it would be any different with any other aspect of our life? And so I have now applied that pretty aggressively to the very few things that I know drive most of my success, which is before I'm writing, before I'm investing, before I'm hiring, who can I steal from to get some of their intelligent contagion?

Chris Williamson 20:05 Oh, it's like an intellectual aphrodisiac.

Codie Sanchez 20:08 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that's right. I still like spirulina for the soul better, but I thought that was good too.

Chris Williamson 20:13 We can keep that, we can keep that.

Codie Sanchez 20:14 Okay.

Chris Williamson 20:14 We can keep that rolling. Yeah, I, um, the content thing, the priming yourself-

Codie Sanchez 20:19 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 20:19 ... who do you want to be around, I love, you know, I know that he's, like, an unspeakable guy because he promoted the fucking lockdowns or whatever. When I read Ryan Holiday-

Codie Sanchez 20:29 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 20:29 ... and I kind of get this, it's much more pedestrian pace-

Codie Sanchez 20:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:33 ... to kind of what's going on, and I imagine, as every man does, that I'm in the Roman Empire. Uh, I imagine that I'm walking through, you know, the Roman Forum or the Stoa Poikile below the, uh, Parthenon in Athens, and you just get this much slower sort of pace of life and pace of... I'm sure if I looked at my HRV, my resting heart rate would come down. You know, I'm just thinking about ideas, and I'm co- it's couched in this much slower, uh, slower sort of existence. And, um, I really, really enjoy that, and, you know, if I was to then go in and try and have a difficult conversation, I think I'd feel more resilient. If the alternative is watching a whatever podcast, like, we kick these OnlyFans thots out, like, "Can you believe what Candace Owens said to this," like such and such a person? It's like, all right, well, guess, like, what dreams I'm having tonight. Like, I want dreams... I, here's a good metric. Uh, me and George Mack have been talking about the difference between hidden and observable metrics, and we're trying to come up with some of the greatest hidden metrics-

Codie Sanchez 21:38 Mm.

Chris Williamson 21:38 ... that tell you whether your life is going well or not. One of his that was pretty contrarian was the number of hours per year that you spend in a hammock is, like, a really fucking great hidden metric of how well your life's going, that, like, if you spend a good few hours in a hammock per year, it's like it's probably pretty good. I would say the number of hours that you have having dreams about the Roman Empire would probably be-

Codie Sanchez 22:00 It's a good one.

Chris Williamson 22:01 ... a, a stronger, uh, a stronger-

Codie Sanchez 22:03 Indicators.

Chris Williamson 22:03 But yeah, um, hidden and observable metrics, I'm fucking obsessed with this idea at the moment.

Codie Sanchez 22:07 I like it. Well, we even, on our fridge, Chris and I have... Mi- Chris is my husband. Not you, Chris, other Chris. And, um, he, one of his favorite quotes is from Marcus Aurelius that is the, something along the lines of, um, throughout your day, assume that the people that you meet will be miserable, wicked, uh, selfish, et cetera, and do right anyway.

Chris Williamson 22:28 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 22:28 Something to that regard.

Chris Williamson 22:28 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 22:29 And I always chuckle with it because, you know, my husband is so... he's a very intense dude, and he has incredibly high expectations. Former military Navy SEAL, um, and expects humans to be honorable and to do the right thing and to be thoughtful, and, uh, turns out most humans are not like that. And so I bought it for him as a reminder coming back into the civilian world that unfortunately this warrior culture that he has been in is not normalized. And thus, if you can start your day every day with really low expectations, it turns out that often the days surprise you. And so that has been helpful for us too.

Chris Williamson 23:02 Ideas strongly stated and loosely held.

Chris Williamson 23:05 Having a strong opinion is the mark of intellect, but having the ability to change it is the mark of true intelligence. Only politicians hold one stance forever for fear of flip-flopping. We mortals do better to constantly experiment.

Codie Sanchez 23:18 Yeah, I, um, I've recently spent some time with Vivek Ramaswamy, uh, the presidential candidate, um, and also spent a lot of time with, uh, other political candidates who are high up, named or won't name, and, um, and what I've been impressed by with, uh, let's say two of the candidates on, uh, one on each side of the aisle, has been that they played in the realm of business where numbers mattered and outcomes were obvious, and so you either win or lose in business. There is a scorecard every single day and every single year, and you only stay in business if you continue to win in the scorecard. And, um, and what I like about Vivek's perspective, I don't agree with him on everything, but he has changed his mind on many things.

Chris Williamson 24:04 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 24:04 And what sort of business leader or human would you be if you couldn't change your mind once you had increased inputs? That would be absolutely wild. You find out X and you say, "Nope, already made up my mind on this," and yet, that is what we expect of our politicians often and our leaders. Like, "Well, this guy changed his mind." Thank fucking god. Thank God there is a human out here who continues to think not just in sound bites but in full nuance.

Chris Williamson 24:27 So, I've got this idea about the unreliable ally-

Codie Sanchez 24:30 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 24:30 ... and basically somebody who's a mono-thinker that, uh, is, sticks rigorously to the party line-

Codie Sanchez 24:36 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 24:36 ... that's ideologically pure-... they are very predictable for the future, which means that they make a really great ally, because you know that no matter how much new information comes to them, they're not changing their mind.

Codie Sanchez 24:48 Yep.

Chris Williamson 24:48 So yeah. I, I can totally see why that would be, uh, a good signal that you want in a friend, but a totally terrible one that you want in a political ally, right? Because you don't know, what if the, what if things change a lot over the next couple years and they switch parties? Oh my God. You know?

Codie Sanchez 25:05 Yeah. I think you're right. Yeah. We, we kind of talk about, um, choosing sides. I do think it's really important to have humans who will choose difficult sides but not have strong opinions once they learn new information, and so my husband and I always talk about the fact that, um, you can really... I think what you w- people want but they don't know how to look for it is, most humans, what you want is somebody who will stand by you even when the mob won't, when things are irrational somebody will stand by you because they know who you are as a human being. That is what we want in our lovers, that is what we want-

Chris Williamson 25:40 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 25:40 ... in our friends and in our colleagues. And instead of looking for somebody who has over time taken courageous stances, you look for somebody who has continued to follow set norms in order to put them in a box, and I think that's the mismatch. If instead we looked for people who, no, they took a really difficult stance on this even though that was detrimental, actually-

Chris Williamson 26:02 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 26:02 ... to their well-being, I would rather side with that person than, "Well, this person has done the party line continuously, and so I could assume the outcome here."

Chris Williamson 26:11 Two really good models for this. When was the last time... In fact, more, when was the last time that you heard this person change their mind?

Codie Sanchez 26:18 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 26:19 Like, can you recall when they said, "I was wrong about X"?

Codie Sanchez 26:22 Yep.

Chris Williamson 26:22 And especially if they, they're front and center about it. Secondly, how often do their opinions surprise you? Right?

Codie Sanchez 26:29 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 26:30 I think about so many of the creators online that are big, and I know, tell me something's gonna happen, Russell Brand's being accused with a, a Me Too thing. There you go, I know every single person in this lineup's opinion, right? I can predict it with 100% accuracy.

Codie Sanchez 26:46 Interesting.

Chris Williamson 26:47 The most, as far as I can tell, good faith, genuinely intellectually virtuous people are the ones who every so often are going to do something and you go, "Really? Oh, you think that?"

Codie Sanchez 27:00 Yep.

Chris Williamson 27:00 "Hmm. Wro- I don't agree," or, "That might be wrong," or whatever. Say what you want about Sam Harris. I know he's like the least cool guy on the internet at the moment and everyone wants to keep dunking on him, despite the fact he's not on Twitter he continually trends on Twitter, um, but I have good faith that he believes what he says.

Codie Sanchez 27:19 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 27:20 That counts for a lot. But the problem is, unreliable. Really unreliable ally, right? Third thing, final thing, is how many different problems does this person explain with the same solution?

Codie Sanchez 27:34 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 27:34 So if all of the issues of the world, if all of the problems are because of climate change-

Codie Sanchez 27:38 Wait, no-

Chris Williamson 27:38 ... or all of the problems are because of racism or all of the problems are because of capitalism-

Codie Sanchez 27:41 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:42 ... it's like, oh, your demand for answers outstrips your supply.

Codie Sanchez 27:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:47 And because you only have this much world view and perspective, you just retrofit the one answer you have to all of the problems that are in front of you.

Codie Sanchez 27:56 Yeah. One of the things that I've found most interesting is when we're analyzing companies, the best companies and their founders, they do this one thing. They say, "Here's the action I wanna take and here's our company, I'd love you to poke holes in it and tell me the things you think I'm missing." And they are actively looking for disagreement, because they don't wanna be right, they want to win. And most people who want to win, all we care about is we wanna information gather. We wanna always be connecting dots, and we can only connect dots if we see more of them. And so the winners are usually the ones that will ask you, "Tell me what I'm doing wrong. Tell me what I'm missing here. I think this, but I g- I am open to persuasion one way or the other." And it was funny 'cause we actually did a, a little mini podcast the other day and I was so irritated because I had this person on because they had an incredible tweet that I was like, "Ooh, spiky point of view. I wanna talk about that." And then they came on and they just softl- softened it, and they waffled it, and they didn't at all stick by what they had said.

Chris Williamson 28:54 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 28:55 And, and I a- I was, I was poking, I'm like, "Di- did you change your mind on this? Like, do you think something differently?" And they're like, "No. Well, what I meant to say was..." I'm like, "No, what you meant to say is that you got kind of called out for this, and your strengths and beliefs were overcome by other people's opinions and likes." And those type of people, once that happens to me once with somebody, I realize, "Hey, those can be an acquaintance, but they'll never be in the inner circle."

Chris Williamson 29:19 I had an interesting lesson that I learned which relates to something that you had here, the, the gift of dissent.

Codie Sanchez 29:29 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 29:29 "Sycophants, yes men, will kill you faster than dissent. Surround yourself with unruly individuals who make you stand your ground or berate you for not."

Codie Sanchez 29:38 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 29:39 That's exactly the same as what you were just talking about.

Codie Sanchez 29:40 Yeah. We, um... You know, one of our job, one of my favorite job descriptions of all time is the, uh, Shackleford job description, which is, um, Shackleford went to the, went to Antarctica, right? And wrote this little tiny job description that n- now has been used all over the internet about, you know, high likelihood to die, looking for adventurous souls, um, you know, who, who want the ability to fail greatly basically. And one of the things I talk about with our team and the people that we hire continuously is, you wanna look for the people who get off on the hard. Like, you wanna look for the people who, when there is a potential to fail and when something is difficult, is when they get interested. And if it's not that interesting, they're probably not going to, to participate.

Chris Williamson 30:23 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 30:24 And those fume- humans are relatively rare because in today's world, we want to succeed so badly, uh, and it seems like we have repercussions that if we do fail, there is something wrong with us. And yet most of the most successful people I know have just failed prolifically, continuously, and yet iterated and learned on it. Um, and so, you know, on our team one of the other things that w- that we do and, you know, Tanner's here so he can tell you if I'm lying or not, but, uh, like-... I find that if you are a manager of humans, if you are a leader of humans and your humans don't disagree with you often, then you probably are not a leader of humans. You're a director, you're somebody who they work for because they have to, but you haven't actually inspired somebody enough to tell you their true thoughts one way or the other.

Chris Williamson 31:08 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 31:09 And that's usually what kills companies faster than anything, is a series of yes men surrounding somebody who should have been told no.

Chris Williamson 31:17 The problem as well is if you don't have people who will tell you what reality is showing you, your own obfuscation and biases and blindness will never get corrected, and presuming that you start to continue to make progress over time, the impact of your decisions continues to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

Codie Sanchez 31:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 31:37 And that means that at the time when your impact and the magnitude of what you choose to do is at its greatest, your ability to see what reality's feedback to you is is at its lowest, and you've had this emperor has, like, Emperor's New Clothes fucking scenario, right?

Codie Sanchez 31:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 31:54 For God knows how long, and it means that you, you're completely out of touch.

Codie Sanchez 32:00 Yeah, it's true. Well, I even joke with my husband that, uh, you, you should tell me when I look fat. Please do, because I don't want to hear that from somebody else, first of all. Second of all, it's not healthy for me to be that way, so in fact I would want nothing more than the humans that are closest to me to tell me the hard thing first before I go out and people tell me I have no clothes or I look awful in this.

Chris Williamson 32:19 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 32:19 And where is it okay in society where we say, "Oh, it's just a little white lie. Yeah, they didn't look great, but I lied to them." Why would you wanna be lied to by somebody that you know loves you? You, you certainly won't get lied to by people who don't, and so let's front, you know, let's front run the pain so that we could have some short term pain, maybe even in private instead of, of suffering over the long term. Um, well actually we were talking about our mutual friend Hormozy before, and I'm a, I'm like many people, a super people pleaser. Like, actually-

Chris Williamson 32:48 I'm really bad.

Codie Sanchez 32:49 ... at my core, which is probably why we're semi-good at media. We can have empathy and understanding which leads to, uh, association. And, um, and so I'm really bad at that, which means that sometimes I'm too agreeable, and later I'll be like, "Ugh, I didn't agree with that. Why did I, why did I say that thing? And why did I say yes to this when I shouldn't have been saying yes to this?" And so, you know, he jokingly has become my Captain No, and I'll just say, "I don't feel like saying no to this, so I'm gonna screenshot to you any time I don't, and you just tell me no, because I already know I should say no. And then I'm gonna start screenshotting you when I actually do." And so we trade back and forth nos, because the more successful you get, the more questions and requests you're gonna have, and if you don't learn to say no you won't be successful. There's like a kinda cringey v- video of Elon Musk's first wife, uh, did you see that? Where she, she basically says, it's just cringey in that, in how it's displayed, but the message in cr- is incredible. And the message she basically says is, "I had a very successful husband. I watched him for a long period of time. The number one reason he was the most successful is he had an amazing amount of requests paced upon him, and he learned to say no better, faster, and more frequently than anybody else." And I was like, "If Elon Musk says no a lot, that probably means there's something good happening there."

Chris Williamson 34:02 Mm. How have you overcome your felt sense to want to be a people pleaser?

Codie Sanchez 34:09 Um, practice. Practice saying no as often as possible, uh, with kindness every single time and brevity every single time. So somebody asked me the other day, um, w- they wanted to, to, to style me or something, "Can I, you know, pick out your clothes?" And, uh, and normally I would say, "Oh, you know, I'm okay right now, but thank you so much. You know, I'm, I actually don't need that," or, "I just bought new clothes," or I'd have some excuse. And now it is, "No. Thank you. I hope you're well." No, period, end of story. The second that you allow one other sentence behind the word, you have allowed an opt-in. So if instead I say, "No, I don't really need it right now," what's the opt-in? Well, what about later? You know, if I say, "No, I'm, I already bought some clothes," it's like, well, what about, uh, I give you some clothes? And so what I found is we allow our concern for hurting other people's feelings to open a door that just means we sound like more of a dick later, because-

Chris Williamson 35:08 Oh, yeah.

Codie Sanchez 35:09 ... we coulda said no fast up front, but we shoulda said it later.

Chris Williamson 35:12 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 35:12 The, the other truth is, you will, people will be pissed at you about this. People will be upset. I'm sure it happens to you all the time. I'm almost thankful I don't have a podcast 'cause I could only imagine the amount of times interesting people that you really like ask to be on this podcast, and you have to say, "No. Thank you." And no matter how you do it and no matter how you phrase it, that is always gonna feel a certain way to a person.

Chris Williamson 35:37 One of the problems that you encounter if you don't end up learning to be able to say no fully is that you have a, kind of like a wave, a swell underneath the surface of these... First you kick a can down the road, and then you kick a couple more cans down the road, and then before you know it, you have this overlapping number of cans that's (laughs) turned into a fucking tornado, and you're, all you spend your time doing is kicking cans.

Codie Sanchez 36:03 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 36:03 Uh, and that is born out of a fear of disappointing people. Uh, I sat next to a mutual friend of ours, uh, and he referred me to a therapist that worked with him, and I was like, "I've tried therapy before a couple of times and it like, mixed, mixed, uh, uh, results out the other side of it, but if she can deal with this guy's bullshit-"

Codie Sanchez 36:24 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 36:24 "... she can definitely deal with mine 'cause he's a dickhead." So (laughs) I, uh, I've, I've started, I've started, um, going back into therapy and, and spending some time with her which is really, really fascinating to be on the receiving end of questions for once as opposed to be the person giving them. And, uh, the people pleasing thing is just such a, a huge, huge block for me. It's such a difficult thing for me to get past, and I'm starting to see it in a lot of other people because a lot of the time you see people's, uh, politeness-... or the way that they move through the world, as an accurate portrayal of their volition or their intention, it's what they actually meant to do. And you go, "No, it's not." Think about all of the things, all of the ways that their desire has been perturbed, right? "I thought this was what you actually meant to do, but what you meant to do was the opposite, but you were so shy or tired or nervous or hungover, or you didn't want to upset this person, or you'd had an argument with your boyfriend that morning," or whatever it was. So the other thing happened. From the outside, what you see is, "Oh, that's what they meant to happen." From the inside, it's this, you know, game of tennis and ping-pong between two choices 10,000 times in a minute, and then they go, "Oh, yeah, we'll do that thing." You go, "Wow." So yeah, that's kind of opened my eyes to the world of people pl- I- I was like a secret member of the people pleaser club and I never knew.

Codie Sanchez 37:41 Yeah. Well, I bet people on the internet would be surprised that you would say you were a s- a people pleaser, and then I would say I was a people pleaser, because we have some rough edges on the internet-

Chris Williamson 37:49 Hm.

Codie Sanchez 37:49 ... we'll take some difficult stances. But I've almost found that people who take difficult stances have learned to do it because we too often didn't.

Chris Williamson 37:56 In spite.

Codie Sanchez 37:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:58 Yep.

Codie Sanchez 37:58 And so it's, you're scared and you don't want to take the difficult stance, but you do it anyway. I think there's very few humans, you know, maybe Donald Trump has learned to like, you know, the pain of-

Chris Williamson 38:08 Mm, to be the heel.

Codie Sanchez 38:10 Right. But I act- I've never met a person, even who was quite abrasive, who said that they didn't have some discomfort with controversy pushing back. Have you ever met one?

Chris Williamson 38:19 Mi- Michael Malice.

Codie Sanchez 38:20 Oh, okay. I don't know who that is.

Chris Williamson 38:21 Uh, he is a cultural commentator, professional troll on the internet.

Codie Sanchez 38:25 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 38:25 He's like the Loki of politics.

Codie Sanchez 38:26 And he likes it.

Chris Williamson 38:27 Oh, he fucking lives for it.

Codie Sanchez 38:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:29 Yeah, he absolutely lives for it. Uh, another interesting one, Warren Buffett doesn't

Chris Williamson 38:34 optimize. Wake up at 5:00 AM, meditate, work out, drink 72 ounces of chloride water and stand upside down, okay. Or, do none of those things, and instead focus on thinking clearly, intently and strategically before you pull any triggers. This relates to an absolute monster from Alex, which was, uh, your fears about perfection will kill you more quickly than your imperfections.

Codie Sanchez 38:59 Yeah. You know, this was an O- OG one of mine. Often, I think if you want success, you should look at those who have had the thing that you already want. And so I was getting caught up in this series of noise surrounding all the shoulds that are in my life, that are actually not needs. And, um, and so I went to one of the people that I admire the most, which is, at least from a business perspective, Warren Buffett. And I looked at what his day was. And, you know, the motherfucker drinks Coke every day. Uh, you know, he's eating McDonald's, uh, cheeseburgers. He's, uh, not working out and hasn't for a while. And he largely sits and thinks and reads a newspaper every single day. And when I looked at that, I thought, "Well, he has basically realized that there's a 10 to 20% that drives the 80%." And so now, I'm in a thing right now where I'm trying to be healthier and work out more and trying to get a six pack and whatever the cool kids do. And, uh, and I have this trainer right now that I really like, but he has me, you know, tracking my steps every day, tracking my macros, uh, inputting a workout where I, like, ch- check the box and how much am I lifting. And what I finally said to him is, "What are the two things we could do where if we did those two things, everything else gets easier?" And my t- team gets tired of hearing me say this, but I'm like, "You have a list 400 lines long of to-do list items, just like everybody else does. And yet, you spend your time ticking them off as opposed to thinking, 'Is there one snowball in which, if I pushed it, everything else became easy?'" And, you know, for- for working out, for instance, there's one snowball, which is, if I just pre-order a set number of meals each week from the same provider, I don't have to track my macros, 'cause I've had the guy track it already and I know what it is. And you could do that even if you just ordered Chipotle every single day. And so there's no monetary reason why you wouldn't have to do it. And, uh, this tracking in the app every single day ridiculously doesn't have to happen. And it's the same thing for a workout. Well, what if I just do the same workout every single day, uh, or three rotations of it for one month, and then I rotate it again for, you know, uh, to have diversity in- in my training? And instead of that, we layer all this complexity, which makes absolutely no sense to me. And so, um, I like cold plunging, I like, you know, some lemon in my water, but I think we'll be fine if we skip it every now and then.

Chris Williamson 41:13 Yeah, and the concern about the over-optimization often gets in the way so much and makes you fret, "I'm worried. What if I- what if I don't show up sufficiently effectively?" I had, uh, Rhian Doris on the show. Do you know him?

Codie Sanchez 41:24 Hm.

Chris Williamson 41:24 From Flow Research Collective.

Codie Sanchez 41:26 Okay.

Chris Williamson 41:26 Neuroscientist, researcher in flow. And, um, he's brilliant. He taught me that if you're bothered about flow, the best thing that you can do as a morning routine is work within 90 seconds of waking.

Codie Sanchez 41:39 Ooh, and that makes me feel better about what I actually do-

Chris Williamson 41:42 Yeah, yeah-

Codie Sanchez 41:42 ... (laughs) which one-

Chris Williamson 41:43 It depends. I- I don't think that what he meant by work was frantically answer emails with lots of capital letters.

Codie Sanchez 41:47 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 41:48 Um, but-

Codie Sanchez 41:48 I don't actually do my own email, so I'm better-

Chris Williamson 41:50 Oh.

Codie Sanchez 41:50 ... at that now.

Chris Williamson 41:50 That's good.

Codie Sanchez 41:51 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:51 Um, but my point being, his thing is get up within 90 seconds of waking-

Codie Sanchez 41:58 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 41:58 Right? Not of getting out of bed. Of waking, be at your desk.

Codie Sanchez 42:01 Interesting.

Chris Williamson 42:02 Working. Especially if you need to do deep work. Writing, creative stuff. Uh, and I've done this on weekends, um, with my newsletter, which I do on a Monday, um, I release on a Monday. So I'll be writing away. And it seems to work pretty quickly. The reason, the argument is that, uh, delta and theta, uh, sleep and, uh, flow brainwave states are right next to each other, so it's actually easier to slip from sleep into flow than it is typically from daily, "I've just walked the dog and got caught in traffic," into flow. Even though you might think, "God, I'm- I'm only just awake, this is stupid," it seems to be the case. At least the neuroscience backs it up.

Codie Sanchez 42:40 Yeah. I mean, there's a great book that I can't remember the name that talks about, um, all the varied habits of the greats and their morning and evening routines.

Chris Williamson 42:48 5:00 AM Club, Robin Sharma.

Codie Sanchez 42:49 Right. And then-

Chris Williamson 42:50 Yep.

Codie Sanchez 42:50 ... there was a- a New York, um, author as well that tried all of them.

Chris Williamson 42:54 Oh, God.

Codie Sanchez 42:54 And then also did a YouTube series on them, which was hysterical.... you know, because it was, like, some of the great writers, y- you know, basically, like, got up at 3:00 AM, snorted a line of cocaine, started writing until they got so hungry they needed a drink, and then they kept writing. I mean, ridiculous, right?

Chris Williamson 43:08 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 43:09 Um, but what I've realized is- is, um, you know, I think the muse loves habits. Whatever those habits are for you, the muse really likes when you continue to show up in the same way day after day. And whatever that way is, you can decide, by and large. But the common thread I've seen for successful people is they have a process, they have a flow. And to try to project that on another person is like to try to say that you should eat this when I know nothing about your genome and how you work. And so for me, I get up early. I do a cold plunge because I, like, am groggy in the morning. I do it for, like, way less than I probably should or any scientific benefit. I grab a coffee, and I get to work. And that works for me right now. But see ya in a year. The only thing that I know will be consistently true is I will have a process I follow every single morning because I do not believe that you wait for the muse for whatever you do. I think you go and you grab it and you tell them to show up at 8:00 AM just like you will.

Chris Williamson 44:01 Very Steven Pressfield-y.

Codie Sanchez 44:03 Mm.

Chris Williamson 44:03 Boredom

Chris Williamson 44:04 is a superpower. The best ideas need breathing room. They're a flower stretching for the sun. Clutter them with meetings and watch them die. Instead, he clears his schedule every morning with no calls prior to 10:00 AM. I do the same paired with two no-call days a week.

Codie Sanchez 44:19 Yeah. I'm pretty religious about this. Uh, my team knows that I only take calls or meetings on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I will substitute something like a podcast for a Tuesday, Thursday or a speech, but nothing continuous, um, because what I've realized is, you know, as you get more successful, you really have one job, and that is to find that 10% to 20% that drives the 80%. And it takes digging. It's needle in the haystack work. It's not stacking up haystacks. And what most people do all day is they stack haystacks. They do the same thing continuously every single day. But what do we know about normal? Normal equals results we don't actually want. And so, um, I find that if I do not allow my ideas room to breathe, I'm anxious, frustrated, kind of un-creative, and probably come up with more problems than solutions.

Chris Williamson 45:08 Hidden metric, how many hours per year are you spending being bored? I bet that that would be correlated with the quality of your life and your flourishing as well. More time being bored would be good.

Codie Sanchez 45:17 I think they say that there- that is true. I wonder though. It depends what type of boredom, right?

Chris Williamson 45:21 Of course, by- by the definition of what we're talking about.

Codie Sanchez 45:23 Bored in a country club, yeah. Not good.

Chris Williamson 45:25 No, yeah, not- yeah, not bored with someone giving a- a rubbish speech, a presentation at work, but like-

Codie Sanchez 45:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:31 ... walking through nature, allowing your mind to flow as it wishes.

Codie Sanchez 45:35 Right.

Chris Williamson 45:36 Pretty good hidden metric.

Codie Sanchez 45:37 Very much so. And so what would we call that instead? It's- it's not really boredom. It's like...

Chris Williamson 45:42 It's not quite rumination. I guess imagination time?

Codie Sanchez 45:44 Yeah, it's- it's basically when are you- when are you in a non-, uh, action-taking state? How often can you be in something where you're not entertaining and you're not taking action?

Chris Williamson 45:54 I had this conversation with John Lovell from the Warrior Poets Society.

Codie Sanchez 45:58 Okay.

Chris Williamson 45:58 Big, uh, like, military guy, pro-patriot guy, uh, also big Christian guy, and he was episode 666. And I got a shit ton of, uh, kickback in the comments because people were like, "I can't believe that you put, like, John on episode 666. We needed a man like John to battle the devil's number." And I was like, "I did- I- it was just a Saturday, right?"

Codie Sanchez 46:18 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 46:18 To me, it was just a Saturday.

Codie Sanchez 46:20 Take it easy, guys.

Chris Williamson 46:20 I didn't think... But anyway, cool. Um, and he taught me this term, which I fucking love. I think you'll enjoy as well. It's called the tyranny of the urgent.

Codie Sanchez 46:28 Oh, yes. Yes.

Chris Williamson 46:30 Oh, so good. The tyranny of the urgent.

Codie Sanchez 46:32 And there's this- like, a quote or something that either he has or somebody else has about that, which is...

Chris Williamson 46:36 Oh, okay. It's not his? I didn't know it was an original.

Codie Sanchez 46:38 Uh, well, I'll have to find it. You are the- you have the memory for quotes. But something to the degree of, um, if you let the tyranny of the urgent overwhelm the important, uh, you'll never achieve.

Chris Williamson 46:51 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 46:51 Something like that.

Chris Williamson 46:52 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 46:52 We can have the internet tell me I'm wrong-

Chris Williamson 46:53 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 46:54 ... and say the right words.

Chris Williamson 46:55 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 46:55 Um, but I think that's- that's very, very true. I also find the most... Like, if you're particularly frazzled, it's probably because you are focused on urgent and not important. And those who focus on important, not urgent, kind of coast their way through life. I mean, to go back to Bill Perkins 'cause I adore the guy, I remember when I showed up at his house the first time, I was late so I was frazzled. I'm Latina, I'm basically always late. And I'm an over-scheduler, so I was doing way too many things. And as I got there, he was- he was so calm while making more money than I do and having m- more businesses than I do. And I was, you know, I was kind of like, "Bill, what do you got going on today?" He's like, "This is the day." I'm like, "What's- what's this?" He's like, "You. This conversation with you is the day. It's the most important thing that I have to do today." And I just thought, "That's fascinating." And even when I talked to his wife, she's like, "Yes, he's quite... He will move very quickly between activities. He'll get out of bed, he will immediately get on a phone call. But the things that are important, he will allow a ton of space on either side."

Chris Williamson 47:49 Yeah, he's not swamped by the urgent.

Codie Sanchez 47:52 Mm-mm.

Chris Williamson 47:52 Yeah, he seems to have a lot of, uh, an awful lot of time. Here's another hidden metric. I'm just throwing this out- out at you. Uh, the average speed that you walk at.

Codie Sanchez 48:03 Oh.

Chris Williamson 48:03 I bet that if it's- I bet its-

Codie Sanchez 48:04 Yes.

Chris Williamson 48:04 ... if it's reduced down, the average speed you walk at per year is, like, a really lovely metric of, "I'm just fucking... I got time, man."

Codie Sanchez 48:12 Except if you're at the airport. Can we out- you know, if you're at the airport, you walk slow.

Chris Williamson 48:15 Wait, because you should always spend as little time as possible at the airport?

Codie Sanchez 48:18 Yeah, and you should just get out of people's way. That's like number...

Chris Williamson 48:20 'Cause-

Codie Sanchez 48:20 Actually-

Chris Williamson 48:21 That's true.

Codie Sanchez 48:21 ... you know what? There's two things I think. I agree with you on when necessary, walking with conviction, but, uh, not franticness-

Chris Williamson 48:31 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 48:31 ... is an interesting one. I think the counter opposite is show me how long it takes you to order at a counter, and I will show you your bank account. I think-

Chris Williamson 48:40 Fly.

Codie Sanchez 48:40 ... the longer people take in... I- this had me- happened to me the other day, and I about lost my mind. But I was at a counter, like one does, a coffee shop or something. And there was- there's always a lady in front of you, right? And the lady in front of you takes four centuries to order a coffee and a muffin. And (laughs) what I realized very quickly is, you know, if you want to get something done, you give it to a busy person is the saying. And I think often-... that's why they say you should take somebody to dinner before you hire them or take them out to lunch, see how they treat the staff. But I also think see how quickly they make decisions. Because people who take forever to order when they stand in line, one, are really comfortable inconveniencing somebody else around them, which means they have limited self-awareness, maybe borderline narcissism, and then simultaneously, they're not very efficient at the things that don't really matter. That coffee order does not really matter, and so if we know we are here for a finite amount of time, why spend so much time on that as opposed to a walk, a sunset, et cetera? It's one of my biggest pet peeves.

Chris Williamson 49:38 Low tolerance for uncertainty as well.

Codie Sanchez 49:40 Oh, yes.

Chris Williamson 49:41 You really didn't like this lady, did you?

Codie Sanchez 49:43 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 49:43 Speaking of that, the toleration challenge: what if your

Chris Williamson 49:47 intellect is measured by how much truth you can tolerate?

Codie Sanchez 49:50 Oh.

Chris Williamson 49:50 Can you be told you're wrong, and that dress makes you look fat, and you're getting older, and he's smarter than you, and take them all in stride?

Codie Sanchez 49:57 Yeah. My husband and I basically have a thing where something annoyed me yesterday, actually, and instead of typically what do we want from our partners? When something annoys us, we typically want the other person to just go, "Yeah, fuck that guy. Yep, agree. You were right. He was wrong." And instead, we make it sort of a purpose of saying, "All right, what are we gonna learn from this?" And so he gave me some feedback that I didn't really like. I was like, "Who's- who's side are you on?" And yet that practice helps us because if we don't associate with, you know, to get woo-woo because we're located here in Austin, we know that, you know, we're not our body because we can have thoughts that change as our body changes. You know, we know we're not our job 'cause our jobs can change. We know we're not the way that we look because if something terrible happens to us, we're still there. So if we know we're not all of these things, why would you let it control so much of your brain for you to be seeing one way or the other about them? And it's something I think about a lot because we're on the internet, which means our reflection is thrown in our face constantly, and often other people's reflection of themselves is thrown in our face constantly. And because of that, I don't think you can have thin skin and be on the internet. That's actually kind of a beautiful thing, 'cause you learn none of it really matters, we will all die eventually, and every one of us will be forgotten.

Chris Williamson 51:16 (laughs)

Codie Sanchez 51:16 And there's such liberty there.

Chris Williamson 51:18 The way that that gets, uh, perverted is people go from, "It doesn't matter, I can have unbounded dreams," to, "It doesn't matter, nothing that I do makes any difference."

Codie Sanchez 51:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 51:29 Right? It's the, uh, nihilism or cynicism versus optimism helicopter thinking seesaw, and it seems to be a- a bit of a knife edge between the two. Um, but I also agree that if you have a... if you have a partner or a friend or somebody who regularly will compromise what's true in order to tell you what's convenient or comfortable-

Codie Sanchez 51:52 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 51:52 ... they are actually, like, really rubbish at- at... wh- why bother asking them anything? Because every single question that they hear is not, "What is the truth about this thing?" It's, "What do you think I want to hear from you?"

Codie Sanchez 52:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 52:07 That's every single question is- is the same question.

Codie Sanchez 52:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 52:10 "What do you think that I want to hear from you?"

Codie Sanchez 52:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 52:12 And then th- you say that, and again, that's the- the people pleaser thing. What else have you learned from Bill Perkins? He was instrumental in bringing you down to earth in a pretty big way, I think.

Codie Sanchez 52:24 Yeah. Well, he was funny. Um, I think our first interaction, uh, I consider myself relatively successful, and, uh, and so when I went to meet with him and I told him about some of the things we were working on, he had this line that stuck with me that I wish I could just, like, put on a bumper sticker somewhere, um, which was, I was explaining all these things we're working on. "We're buying these companies here and here, we're growing." And he kind of looked at me and paused like he does, and he's like, uh, "Cody, do you think that you have been investing in small businesses for so long, small has infected your thinking?" And I was like, "Pfft." And an immediate reaction could have been like, "Who are you? Fuck you. I don't know." Uh, and instead I took a pause and I was like, "God, there's so much freedom in that line." What if I am thinking too small and somebody else who has had a past history of positive performance says that? Then what mi- might I be capable of? And so I almost wish all of us a friend that pushes us harder as opposed to is the shoulder to cry on and says, like, "You know what I'd like you to do next time is something else." In fact, we have another mutual friend that I was talking to that did something really big and really successful, and, uh, and they came to me because they're a high performer and they were like, "What- what should I have done different? What should we have done different?" And I was like, "I think, one, and I want you to hear this, everything you did was incredible. I'm so impressed by you, and- and I think you should keep going." And then I said, "Secondly, there's this one thing that you did that was a mimic of somebody else, and what if that would have been a totally unique style to you? And that's what I want to see from you next time. I think you are capable of coming up with your own style that is totally copyable." And she was like, "God, thanks, because what everybody else said was positives, positives, positives."

Chris Williamson 54:07 Yep.

Codie Sanchez 54:07 And very few people will tell you, "Yeah, but what if you could do this one thing? Not that you're shitty, but, like, what if you could do this one thing better? Wouldn't that be cool?"

Chris Williamson 54:14 Two stories that come to mind. First one, Lex Fridman, uh, was at some, uh, party neurodivergent degenerates at Michael Malice's house, and I was talking to him about... I- I think he was... (clears throat) I think he was saying that he had a lot of work on at the moment, and he was doing his robotics stuff, and he's doing the podcast, and maybe the Ukraine conflict i- was- was going on too, and he was just feeling it, f- like, "All of this stuff's going on," blah, blah, blah. And I was like, "Oh, interesting." And then he, like, took a pause, and he said, "I wish that my friends would stop comforting me when I say that I work hard."

Codie Sanchez 54:51 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:52 Because some of his friends say, "You already work so hard, Lex. You know, you should go easier on yourself. Like, this is- you're doing a lot as it is." He said that he really, really values the friends that say, "Yeah, this is tough, but you're tougher."

Codie Sanchez 55:09 100%. You know, even my mother, she had an incredible line to me. She basically said, and it's so simple but we don't hear it enough, "You just continue every single day to do the best that you can, and only you know what the word best is defined as." And most people put some subjective best, hard, good, bad on you, as opposed to saying, "I believe in you so much that you know what you are capable of, and only you can answer if you are actually living up to that on a daily basis."

Chris Williamson 55:39 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 55:39 And I love that because I actually think most humans are very capable should they apply themselves continuously, and work past a point that is comfortable or even rational.

Chris Williamson 55:48 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 55:48 And if you can do that, you can achieve very many things pending you don't want to be a basketball player and you're, you know, 5'1". Like, pending those things, you can achieve much. And that's part of the reason I'm so prevalent on the internet now is, you know, I made a lot of my money already in, in finance and doing the things that I did previously, and then I realized, ah, I want to make more money 'cause it's fun. I really like every dollar I make, but I think it's more interesting if I could figure out could I help other people actually achieve the same thing? And not because I'm nice. I'm really not that nice. But just to see, like, is that possible? 'Cause that seems like a more interesting and bigger legacy, actually, than just can I apply this one thing continuously? And so, um, lots of people who are on the internet, I think, s- people say one thing or the other about humans like us that talk about things publicly, and yet thank God that there are humans like you who talk about things like neurodivergent being normal, because I thought that just used to mean, well, you know, I have a little bit of ADHD, which means I'm defunct in some way. Um, and so, yeah, I think most humans can work harder, and they just don't want to hear that.

Chris Williamson 57:00 You're getting perilously close to Chamath's man in the arena tweet, which is gonna get you destroyed on the internet.

Codie Sanchez 57:05 Oh, yeah. And I actually have actually used that before.

Chris Williamson 57:07 Oh.

Codie Sanchez 57:07 I do think, you know what? Fuck that. I think if you own a small business and you are a business owner... Now maybe not Chamath in the sweaters and jets at this point. Maybe you have a lot of buffer there, but I actually don't know his life, so I don't know. Um, but I think if you are a small business owner, and you are working really hard out there, you're in the arena.

Chris Williamson 57:25 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 57:25 And, and I think my husband, who went to war multiple times, would say the same thing.

Chris Williamson 57:29 Counts as a, definitely counts as an arena. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Codie Sanchez 57:31 It's some sort of difficult, and we should, we should actually praise people for that a little bit more.

Chris Williamson 57:37 You remember when Elon took over Twitter and, um, he said he g- gets rid of 95% of the coding team-

Codie Sanchez 57:47 That was wild.

Chris Williamson 57:47 ... dev team, whatever, and I think he puts out a job application webpage and says something like, "If you want to work harder than you've ever worked in your entire life, come to Twitter." And people criticized him on the internet and said, "This is a return to, you know, early 1900s sweatshop labor. What is this? Are we gonna be going down chimney sweeping?" And I understand that in a world where we can have much more luxurious, uh, working conditions, and everybody can have their mindful Mondays, and they can have their latte Wednesdays, and stuff like that, and that's not just to mock it. Like, I do think it's a, in some regards, a much more balanced, holistic culture. But what it fails to understand is that there is a cohort of people out there who just want to put their nose on the grindstone and see how fast they can make it spin. Like, all they want to do is work. They love and are fired up and take so much more pleasure from the idea of achieving something completely unreal with their time, and it is a failure of theory of mind for you, person on the internet, to look at that job post from Elon. Maybe it is exploitative. Maybe it's, uh, fortunately, um, like, a coincidence that he can both use the people's drive to be able to achieve whatever they want and also, like, get them a, basically a cut down price to work 24 hours a day.

Codie Sanchez 59:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:17 Perhaps. But it is a failure of theory of mind to understand that there are people out there who just want to do that, and it would fire them up way more to be told, "Here's an obscenely unrealistic goal in a ridiculously short time span, and I want you to do it. Here's as much Adderall as you need and a comfortable standing desk. Let's see what you can-"

Codie Sanchez 59:39 Run.

Chris Williamson 59:39 "... manifest." Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 59:40 Yeah, I mean, I was, uh... So my husband was a- a Navy SEAL, and I was at the, it was like the 40th, uh, year anniversary of his team, SEAL Team 3, and, uh, I thought it was fascinating on a couple different fronts. One, you looked around the group of 600 people, uh, all gathered, and you could immediately pick out, uh, all of the SEALs, right, out- out of uniform, because it's become so rare to be fit and healthy and have, you know, 200 people who are like that all in one space, 200 warriors, was really rare. I thought that was interesting. What I also thought was interesting as I spoke to them about it and I spoke to those who had come out and those who were still in, is those who had come out had said, "Do you know what we miss more than anything?" And I'm like, "The adrenaline, you know, the operations, kicking down doors."

Chris Williamson 1:00:27 Camaraderie.

Codie Sanchez 1:00:29 It was doing extremely difficult things with other people who want to do extremely difficult things well, and that level of, of human who wants to excel is just rare. And so when you're around them, you feel it. You know, you feel a difference between you have an energy that is positively accelerated when you're around another doer. They just, they don't drain from you because they're too busy doing and pushing out. And with, with the SEAL teams, I was never in them. I can't speak to any of it myself, but what I've seen is that these guys miss that more than anything else when they get out. It's not just, like, camaraderie. It's, "We were excellent at what we did, and we held each other to an incredibly high standard, and we had a joint purpose." And, I mean, there was a study done during the Blitz, right, during, during the World War, that everybody talks about with humans were conceivably happier as defined by, uh, lower suicide rates during the Blitz than, uh, afterwards, because there was this shared-... purpose and meaning. And so I think if you compare your shared purpose and meaning with a group of excellent humans, let go of all of those, uh, who do not want to be excellent because cancer spreads,

Codie Sanchez 1:01:44 then you can create somewhere where people want to spend 24 hours working, because society at large looks nothing like that. And you can feel the difference.

Chris Williamson 1:01:53 What did you learn looking around a room of 200 SEALs, 300 SEALs, what did you learn from looking at their spouses?

Codie Sanchez 1:02:03 Oh, that's interesting. Um, well, the spouses probably fit in a lot of ways two categories. Uh, one category would be more traditional looking, sundresses, you know, cute, kids running around, happy looking American family. And the other were just as jacked as their, you know, just as-

Chris Williamson 1:02:21 (laughs)

Codie Sanchez 1:02:21 ... as, as like, uh, strong and tattooed, uh, as their men. And so, um, I actually thought that was an interesting dichotomy, and you see that. Like, Gabrielle Lyon's a friend of mine, and she's a badass doctor, and also just like one of the strongest, fittest women I've ever met in my life.

Chris Williamson 1:02:38 Is her husband a SEAL?

Codie Sanchez 1:02:39 Her husband's a SEAL.

Chris Williamson 1:02:40 Right.

Codie Sanchez 1:02:40 Mm-hmm. And a surgeon. And, uh, and then, uh, Emily Frisella, Andy Frisella's wife, also just jacked, in great shape. Um, her husband isn't a SEAL, but, like, I do think that it seems like really strong, driven men that are team guys either want sort of the traditional spouse, um, you know, sundress, et cetera, or like a very strong similar person to them. And when I've gotten to know a lot of these guys, and I have a lot of respect for them and their spouses, there's two types of strengths there. I mean, the- the physically strong thing is really important, but you will not last, I mean, the divorce rate among team guys and special operators in general is incredibly high.

Chris Williamson 1:03:19 Is it really?

Codie Sanchez 1:03:19 Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. It's the highest of any military. Um, one, because they're gone all the time, both training and deployment. Um, and two, because I've been, you know, through a deployment with my husband, and it's emotionally taxing in a way that we are not habitualized to. And so, um, you have to be strong enough to do that. I- I think I would've struggled to do it with kids. Like, I have nothing but respect for the women who have kids with men who go into line of duty every day where they could potentially die. That's incredibly difficult to live through.

Chris Williamson 1:03:50 What's the reality of being married as a power couple?

Codie Sanchez 1:03:54 Hm. Um, god, you know what's so funny is everybody says it's really hard, and Chris and I kind of look at each other every day, and we're like, "Best part of my day right now." Like, we wake up in the morning, you know what I actually do in the morning? I don't get in the cold plunge first. Chris and I snuggle like little nerds for like five or 20 minutes. We're just like snuggling, talking to each other. The dog gets into the bed. The dog's a little tiny thing, not even a cool looking team guy dog. And uh, and he's, you know, my person who's somebody that I can just trust and rely on, and I think I'm that for him too. We loved the quote, I remember in the beginning when we were first dating, didn't age well because I think it was Jeff Bezos who said, uh, "I married my wife because I wanted somebody who could get me out of a third world prison at any point." Uh, but, uh, we always kind of associated with that. You know, our thing is it's us against the world. And so, um, I think that's the one truth of being a power couple. I- I don't know any different because I've always worked, so I've never been... And my- my, you know, husband, he's always worked, and most of my significant others were powerful and successful in a traditional sense. Um, but one of the most incredible things I think when you find another human who is striving for something is you really can track on what's going on in your lives, and- and there's a lot you can share. Whereas, at least from my perspective, if I was with a man who wasn't working very hard, uh, in a job, in some way, shape or form, it's harder for us to be on the same page, and I end up having to talk with a lot of other people about the thing I'm obsessing on all day long, and I never really understood how people could be with s- Like, the trophy wife thing never really made sense to me. A trophy girlfriend makes a lot of sense. Trophy boyfriend makes a lot of sense. A wife or husband doesn't to me because what would you talk about? Do you guys just look at each other all day? Like, what's happening there? And so I actually think that's really shallow and we should all strive to be the best versions of ourself. Not to mention, do you remember that, um, there was a blog post a million years ago where the guy was, like really brutally said, "Why would I ever have a trophy wife or a trophy husband..." He was talking about a trophy wife. Um, and he's like, "And- and marry that person for just their looks when your looks are definitely going depreciate over time and my assets will appreciate over time?" And at the time I remember being like, "Yeah, fuck that guy." And then I was like, "Well, also kind of true. Makes a lot of sense if all we're talking about is the way you look. That's pretty shallow." And so I don't have a lot of complaints, and I think I wouldn't last very long with somebody who wasn't striving right alongside me.

Chris Williamson 1:06:31 What... Th- the, there's a lot of talk and narrative on the internet about the sort of alpha polarity, the, you- you know, super masculine guy with the very feminine woman, there must be a leader, there must be a follower. What is the dynamic like given that you are two leaders?

Codie Sanchez 1:06:49 Yeah. Uh, I sort of have this theory, and we'll see if it plays out. You had the girlboss #MeToo movement, right? "Women power, fuck guys, we don't need you." Then you had the alpha man movement. You know, "Get behind me. I'm the protector. I'm in charge. You know, women stay home in your gardens." And I think in the future what we're gonna come back to, which is what we do every time we have massive pendulers- pendulum swings, is like, "Uh, yeah, why don't we both kind of chill out in the middle?" Like, that seems like typically where we go. And I think there will be not an alpha power couple, but a, "What if we both just realized that we're nuanced humans and we look for somebody who could actually support us continuously?" A bunch of the guys that have that alpha woman-... movement saying got divorced. Like, one of the main guys who was like, "You must protect your family, you know, do whatever," a- and had a, a woman that was sort of this other thing, gets a divorce. The other guy who's a big proponent of it, like Andrew Tate, not fucking married. So, like, the people who are talking about this alpha man movement, tssh, let's scoreboard it. Let's see over time does this work out for you. And I'm a big proponent of you should do whatever you want, but I think I'm good friends with the Hormozis because I watch them have each other's back through time, and that seems to me more sustainable than the other way around.

Chris Williamson 1:08:07 Because-

Codie Sanchez 1:08:07 What do you think?

Chris Williamson 1:08:08 Uh, so I think that there is a significant cohort of women who are, like you, attracted to guys who have excellence-

Codie Sanchez 1:08:19 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:08:20 ... but don't have that same drive themselves.

Codie Sanchez 1:08:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:08:23 I don't think that the reverse is quite as true for men.

Codie Sanchez 1:08:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:08:27 I don't think you're going to find a normal dude who, uh, chugs away at a perfectly acceptable job but is like, "Do you know, I really get turned on by, like, boss bitch women-"

Codie Sanchez 1:08:40 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:08:40 "... that are, like, you know, like, high-powered lawyers and stuff."

Codie Sanchez 1:08:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:08:43 Because the socioeconomic status of a woman doesn't matter as much to a man on average as it does in reverse.

Codie Sanchez 1:08:49 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:08:49 So I think that ultimately being competent as a man... And this is, you know, to cut through three and a half years of learning evolutionary psychology, whether it be status, whether it be resources, whether it be looks, whether it be height, whether it be being funny, whether it be being charming or whatever, like, just portraying competence, right? But competence comes on both sides of the equation.

Codie Sanchez 1:09:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:13 And the polarity can be changed with quite nicely because, you know, if you see, as a husband, if you see your wife just like a fucking wizard with the kids-

Codie Sanchez 1:09:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:23 ... you know, and th- the all three of them are ready for school five minutes early and the breakfast's done and th- there's a kiss on the cheek and she's out the door, you're like, "Yeah, you're a fucking boss."

Codie Sanchez 1:09:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:31 Like, sure, you're not going off to the, the, uh, office or whatever, but you've got this shit on lock. That's attractive.

Codie Sanchez 1:09:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:38 A-grade players look for A-grade players, right?

Codie Sanchez 1:09:42 Regardless of sector.

Chris Williamson 1:09:43 Correct.

Codie Sanchez 1:09:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:43 Regardless of what the sub-genre of game is that they're playing.

Codie Sanchez 1:09:48 Yeah, I-

Chris Williamson 1:09:48 Right?

Codie Sanchez 1:09:48 ... think that's right.

Chris Williamson 1:09:49 And i- this is why, you know, very rarely do you see in... I've been watching that, uh, Quarterback on Netflix.

Codie Sanchez 1:09:57 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:58 It's about three different NFL quarterbacks, and Patrick Mahomes is one of them. And you look at all three of the wives of these guys, all three of them pretty well-spoken. They're not, you know, super pretty. Like, uh, I think at least maybe two of them have been together since before they were even in college.

Codie Sanchez 1:10:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:17 Right? So it's not like they've picked up some, like, hot totty-

Codie Sanchez 1:10:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:21 ... girl and, like, moved her into the house or whatever. Um, longstanding relationships. But they all, all of the girls are, like, competent-

Codie Sanchez 1:10:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:29 ... with what they do. Like, they, they're able to talk and they're able to explain and they have insight about themselves and they have insight about their partner, and you're like, "Hmm. Yeah, that's, like, that's hot. That's cool."

Codie Sanchez 1:10:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:39 Right? Like, it's attractive. Competence is attractive. And incompetence is almost always going to be unattractive.

Codie Sanchez 1:10:44 Yeah, it's a- it's absolutely true. Yeah, I mean, I do think one, one thing I've found for women that I think women really need to watch out for, and I've noticed this just among my friends 'cause I'm, I am a little bit older now and so I have a lot of my friends who have had kids and been married for a period of time, and a lot of them are highly competent, like you said, were incredible mothers, are incredible mothers, have gone through childbirth multiple times, which still intimidates me and I find incredibly impressive. Um, and then I found there's this, uh, there's this lull period after your kids don't need you as much anymore and, you know, your husband has continued to progress in this linear career progression, and you poured yourself with competence into your, your, your kids. And I think we will see in the future a rising usage of, uh, prescription pills, sleeping aids, Adderall, um, to this subset of women because they start to realize, "Uh, where do I go now? And society doesn't really have this fit for me any longer."

Chris Williamson 1:11:43 Well, what that typically or traditionally would have been if we roll back over 200 years, we would have been in pan-generational houses.

Codie Sanchez 1:11:52 Yep.

Chris Williamson 1:11:52 Right? So it would have been assisting with my sister's daughters, or assisting with my daughter's daughters, assisting with my niece, assisting with my whatever, right? You know, there would be so much to do. Uh, it's called alloparenting. Not many animals do it, but humans do, where multiple